Sexual Harassment and Operational Effectiveness of Women in Technical Education in Ogun State, Nigeria

Abstract

Achieving a considerable level of operational effectiveness is essential to the management of institutions. Among the womenfolk, sexual harassment at the workplace has been identified as one of the inhibiting factors that hinder their performance efficiency, hence concerted effort should be made to mitigate its effect. This study, therefore, considered estimating the effect of sexual harassment on the operational effectiveness of women in the employment of technical and vocational education in Ogun State. Three hypotheses were formulated to examine the relationship each of the identified factors has on women's effectiveness at work. The population of the study consists of all-female staff in Technical Vocational Institutions in Ogun State, Nigeria, out of which a sample of one hundred and twenty (120) female staff were randomly selected from three technical vocational educations in Ogun State. Two-structured questionnaires tagged Situation-Specific Assessment of Sexual Harassment (SSASH) and Questions for Operational Effectiveness (QOE) was adapted. Ordinary Least Square method was employed to validate the established relationship, while hypotheses were tested using a t-test. The result shows that factors of sexual hostility and unwanted sexual attention harm employees' efficiency on the job while that of Sexual coercion was found to be insignificant, thereby inferred that the factor does not have any effect on the operational effectiveness of women in technical education. Thus, combating sexual harassment for effective job performance of female employees’ in specialized training needed to be geared towards other directions rather than rape and coercion.